Black Bear Diner Waco — Restaurant in Waco

My family and I went out to eat last night for dinner, 9/22/24. Our waitress Kendra was very polite and helpful. There were 7 of us, 5 adults, two kids. She took the orders quick and got our drinks out to us in a timely fashion. We all got our food after a while, there was a bit of a wait but whatever, it happens. My sister ordered the alfredo and immediately spit it out onto the plate after one bite, we all tried it and it tasted like the cream they used was spoiled. She asked for chicken fried steak in return and it was done right away.

My brother ordered a simple fish and chips meal and didn’t get his food with the rest of us, in fact, didn’t get it at all until after my sister received her second order. We asked for a manager to come talk to us, because we had two fiascos with food and were a little displeased. She came over and said something like I heard we had an issue with the food. At this point we still hadn’t received the fish and chips. We told her that we were a little upset that we had to remind them that we were missing an entire meal, and wanted to know why that was. She immediately threw the waitress, Kendra under the bus and said “oh she forget to ring it up, that’s her fault.” Then said something along the lines of “well what do you want me to do?” Then walked away before we could answer.

She then took the fish and chips plate out of the waitress’s hands and make it a point to walk it over to our table. We told the waitress what she said and it visibly upset her because she has apparently been having issues with the manager on more than one occasion. The manager was rude, dismissive, and disrespectful to her staff and snarky with us, and we spent over $100 that night on dinner. The manager disrespected another waitress there while we were leaving and you could just tell the staff was walking on eggshells around her.

My brother got sick later that night after eating only the fish and chips and puked everything up. So, I assume the fish was bad too. I have 15 years restaurant experience myself and was just disappointed in how everything was handled. I’ve done everything from bussing tables, to cooking, to management, and the entire restaurant just seemed like they were scared to do anything around the manager. That type of disrespect and treatment shouldn’t be allowed anywhere. Not to mention, the quality issues with the food.

I hope the employees find something better. They’ll never get another...

I want to say the food and ambiance were excellent and this location is a great addition to Waco.

I was not impressed by the service however, specifically the host. The host that seated us felt the need to explain the menu, which is fine, and then asked us for a review on google Sure okay... Can I eat food first please (?!).

Our actual server was fine, but I learned that when I asked for a "bottomless cold brew" with those exact words she had upsold me to a creamy vanilla cold brew by asking me about creamer options. I didn't catch this. Not only is it more expensive but also single serve- not bottomless.

I wanted a fresh plate for pancakes that I was sharing with my husband. We had the eggs Benedict and the plate was covered in yolk. The host, for some reason, stopped by and asked if we needed anything. I was hesitant and should have known better but I asked for more iced coffee and a clean plate and even specified I did not want a to-go container because we are eating these here while gestering to the pancakes. She said with a frown, okay I'll tell your server.

The server comes a few minutes with hot coffee, a to-go container and a check and the quintessential "no rush". Basically everything the host said was wrong setting the server up for failure.

So I eat my pancakes in the restaurant in a to-go container. And before we leave the server stops by one more time and I'm able to get my cold coffee to go. But she said something weird, "sorry but we were out of it earlier". So she knew I wanted it, didn't bring it- didn't address it and probably didn't want to bring it since it's not actually bottomless.

We get to the check-out stand and the cashier again asks for a review.

Despite the good food, which is miles better then the current competition I left annoyed.

My advice is if your going to ask for a review, do it once at the end of the meal. More importantly do not come to my table if your not prepared to fulfill my requests. It was the host inserting herself between us and the server that led to a mediocre experience that led to me not getting what I wanted. Stay in your lane.

I will certainly be back, because as a new restaurant there are still kinks to sort out and the food/ portions are a...

Ill start with the Good things about our visit and then dwell into the bad things.

My Wife and I have been wanting to try this place since they opened, but were afraid due to the negative reviews.

We finally decided to give them a try.

The Good:

Service‐ We were sat within seconds of walking through the door, our waitress greeted us within a minute of us sitting down and got our drink order put in. The greeter and waitress were very welcoming and friendly.

Food‐ Our food came out fairly quick and was nice and hot.

Atmosphere- Place looked clean, had some music playing overhead, really nice looking place.

The Bad:

Menu- Once we sat down, we were each given a newspaper, which took us a whole minute to realize that they were the menus, not that big of a deal.

Food- We both ordered the Big Foot Chicken Fried Steak, she had onion rings with a loaded baked potato that also came with a house salad and I had Green beans with a loaded baked potato with the house salad.

Huge salad came out on a small plate that was hard to mix up with the dressing without the salad falling off the plate.

The ranch dressing tasted like mayonnaise, and they put chunks of bacon in it, which we found out as we were pouring it on the salad, we had to ask the waitress what the chunks were in the ranch, thats when she told us it was bacon, she also mentioned that the Ranch is home made..like they made sure everyone gets a fat random chunk of bacon in their ranch.

The butter for the baked potato comes out in individually wrapped packs, looks like mints and seemed like it was frozen.

Green beans were really good, Onion Rings were ok...onion rings tasted like they came out of a frozen bag.

The chicken fried steak wasn't good at all, reminds me of the frozen ones you get from Walmart, thought we were at Dairy Queen for a whole second. We got a quarter of the way through it and had to stop.

We also shared a brownie sundae for dessert, it...